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Jimmy "Duck" Holmes
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Jimmy "Duck" Holmes: Cypress Grove
by C. Michael Bailey
Cypress Grove is the tale of two very different artists following well-tested and successful professional trajectories. While none of the Ur-bluesmen (Charlie Patton, Son House, Tommy Johnson, Skip James, Ishmon Bracey) are living, there remain a few musicians who knew them while they were still alive. One such musician is Jimmy Duck Holmes of Bentonia, Mississippi. One listen to the opening “Hard Times" will reveal the Ur-bluesman Holmes knew as one Nehemiah Curtis “Skip" James (1902 -1969). The flavor of ...
Continue ReadingFrank Wildhorn Unveils 'Frank Wildhorn & Friends: Live In Las Vegas With Jane Monheit And Clint Holmes' A Dynamic Return To His Jazz Roots Recorded Live At The Smith Center Inside Cabaret Jazz
Source:
Jill Siegel
Frank & Friends: Live in Las Vegas with Jane Monheit and Clint Holmes, a captivating live album recorded at the Smith Center inside Cabaret Jazz is now available on all streaming platforms featuring 17 tracks lovingly selected by the renowned multi-Grammy, Tony, and Emmy Award-nominated composer and producer Frank Wildhorn for Jane Monheit and Clint Holmes. This album, produced by Frank Wildhorn and Myron Martin, features songs from Wildhorn musicals “Jekyll & Hyde”, “The Scarlet Pimpernel”, “ Wonderland,”” Camille Claudel” ...
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Jimmy Madison To Release His Autobiography 'Drummer Boy' On September 1st, 2025
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Jimmy Madison
Internationally renowned jazz musician, Jimmy Madison, will release his candid, long-awaited autobiography that intersects the worlds of music and mountain climbing on September 1, 2025. In Drummer Boy, Madison shares both his vocation and his avocation from peak moments spent behind his drum kit to breathtaking moments climbing mountain peaks across the globe. His energy and devotion to both passions fill this gripping story that takes readers onto famous stages and into base camps at extreme altitudes. The New Yorker ...
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Jimmy Greene Quintet – 'As We Are Now' Album Release Celebration At The Artists Collective On Thursday, June 12th, 2025
Source:
Lori Reynolds
Exactly thirty-five years after his first life-changing encounter with Jackie McLean at the Artists Collective, saxophonist Jimmy Greene returns to the Collective with his quintet on June 12 to celebrate the release of his latest album, As We Are Now (Greene Music Works). Joining Greene for this special night are the same all-star musicians who appear on the recording: guitarist Mike Moreno, pianist Aaron Goldberg (original member of the Artists’ Collective Twin Towers Quintet, alongside Greene, in 1994), bassist Dezron ...
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Perfection: Jimmy Forrest - 'Soul Street' (1960)
Source:
JazzWax by Marc Myers
Dial Records initiated the “tenor battle" concept in 1947 when the label brought bebop saxophonists Dexter Gordon and Wardell Gray into the studio to record Gordon's composition The Chase. Prestige Records then perfected and exploited the dueling-tenors format, starting in 1950, with Sonny Stitt and Gene Ammons recording of Blues Up and Down and other 78 sides. Among Prestige's series of tenor pairings between 1950 and '60 were Sonny Rollins and John Coltrane playing Tenor Madness (1956); Very Saxy in ...
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Jimmy Mundy: Swing Era Barnstormer
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JazzWax by Marc Myers
Like Fletcher Henderson, Don Redman, Edgar Sampson and Sy Oliver, Jimmy Mundy was one of the architects of the swing era in the early 1930s. Born in Cincinnatti, Ohio, in 1907, Mundy played the tenor saxophone in regional bands, where he developed an ear for arranging. He first worked as an arranger for Earl Hines in the early 1930s and joined Benny Goodman in late 1935 after selling the bandleader a chart. Goodman needed a strong, authentic swing arranger of ...
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Backgrounder: Jimmy Forrest - Out of the Forrest
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JazzWax by Marc Myers
Tenor saxophonist Jimmy Forrest began his recording career in 1943 with Andy Kirk's band. There, he learned all he needed to know about swing. By 1949, he was touring and recording with Duke Ellington. Next came his first leadership album, Night Train, in 1951, featuring the hit title song. Night Train, a lift from Ellington's Happy Go Lucky Local (1946), which was featured in Ellington's The Deep South Suite. But in all fairness to Forrest, he took an Ellington riff ...
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Perfection: Jimmy Smith - 'Too Old to Dream'
Source:
JazzWax by Marc Myers
In April 1960, organist Jimmy Smith joined forces with tenor saxophonist Stanley Turrentine and recorded Back at the Chicken Shack for Blue Note. One of the tracks was “When I Grow Too Old to Dream," by Oscar Hammerstein II, Sigmund Romberg. The song was introduced in The Night Is Young (1935) and was given a gospel-soul shove on the 1963 album by Smith, Turrentine and Donald Bailey on drums. (Guitarist Kenny Burrell appears on two tracks but not this one.) ...
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Backgrounder: Jimmy McGriff - Step 1
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JazzWax by Marc Myers
Philadelphian Jimmy McGriff began as a pianist but fell in love with the organ after hearing Richard “Groove" Holmes play the Hammond B3 at his sister's wedding. He bought his first organ in 1956, spent six months at New York's Juilliard School of Music and then studied the organ privately with Milt Buckner, Jimmy Smith and Sonny Gatewood. He began leading an organ combo in 1960. Step 1 was recorded for producer Sonny Lester at Capitol Records in 1970. The ...
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Documentary: Jimmy Wormworth, 2015
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JazzWax by Marc Myers
Jimmy Wormworth was determined to play drums from an early age. Born in Utica, N.Y., he quickly became part of the “Upstate Guys"—a local nickname that referred to the sizable number of jazz musicians who grew up and gigged in the center of New York state. In the 1950s, Jimmy toured in Europe, and in the U.S. with Nellie Lutcher. Starting in 1960, Jimmy gigged with Charles Mingus, Horace Parlan, Charlie Rouse and played and recorded with Lou Donaldson, Lambert, ...
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Backgrounder: Jimmy Forrest's 'Forrest Fire'
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JazzWax by Marc Myers
In the years leading up to World War II, tenor saxophonist Jimmy Forrest got his start in bands led by Jay McShann and Andy Kirk. After the war, he was with Duke Ellington and then was on his own. His big claim to fame was co-writing and first recording Night Train, which became a jazz and R&B standard. He also toured with Count Basie. Among my favorite albums by Forrest are those on the New Jazz and Prestige record labels. ...
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Recordings: As Leader | As Sideperson
